Note. Poundstretcher: a UK discount chainstore. Heeley: an area of Sheffield, South Yorkshire; Lancelot Works, a former steel factory, is its outstanding landmark.

Mercurialis the Younger:
Fragments translated from the
‘Fortunatus’ Codex
with an Exegesis

I

only Prato would ask why

Serenus the first babbler

of the abracadabra

was so soon to die

II

the texts Miracola’s been fed –

just so – better eaten than read –

III

Eclectus learnt Egyptian in his sleep –

now when he meets his daemons in the mirror

he can’t understand bad Greek –

IV

[ ] anticipates –

[ ] antiquates –

V

stinks of Black Sea herbs – chants

from a Thessalian hymnbook –

spends all day at the gym

watching that wrestler with the moustache –

cheeks the colour of pistachio –

the same Sibylla I [ ]

VI

‘the One which inclines towards the One

is the One without before or after’ –

Posthumus’ new treatise

comes free with a bottle of Avernus water –

VII

you want moly? that’s Fabius’ game –

hellebore by any other name –

VIII

backwinter at the mudbaths –

Aelius is cured –

of everything except

endless chatter about mudbaths –

IX

now her wrestler’s an ordinary ghost

Sibylla asleep or awake

mutters and moans ‘Apollo!’

X

interpreter of dreams? –

Faustina? – a novice –

but Philo pays her a visit –

and pays her invoice –

XI

here lies [illegible]

who once craved to be known

then hoped to forget

what he was known for

Exegesis

I. In his Res Reconditae Serenus Sammonicus, physician to Gordian II, makes the first known reference to the abracadabra, describing how it should be written as an amulet against disease. M appears to suggest that it was either well known or self-evident that Serenus’ publication of the charm provided the motive for his murder in 212 ad.

II. Miracola features in several M poems as an eclectic cult-follower. Perhaps one or more of these cults practised logophagy although M may only be ridiculing Miracola’s enthusiasm for creative writing workshops and literary festivals.

III. Whether Eclectus indulged in catoptromancy or narcissism is unclear. Perhaps both. M appears to doubt that the daemonic language is Egyptian but ‘bad Greek’ does not anticipate Dee’s discovery that the angels’ lingua franca mixes Greek and Welsh. Nor does the use of hypnos in line 1 imply hypnosis.

IV. The most corrupt fragment in this codex. Does it suggest that knowledge of the future would give the present the status of the distant past? M was rarely so philosophic and would have been no admirer of the Four Quartets.

V. The last words have been knifed from the MS. Would anybody censor a phrase such as ‘once loved’? An obscenity seems the likelier provocation. The ‘Black Sea herbs’ and ‘Thessalian hymnbook’ imply that Sibylla hoped to win her wrestler by spells. Perhaps these also required ‘pistachio’ make-up but there is an ambiguity: the complexion is possibly the wrestler’s.

VI. A fragment so obscure it must speak for itself. There are references in the Annales Anticyrae to Posthumus’ Lectures on Plotinus but no text survives.

VII. The identification of moly with helleborus niger has also been made by modern writers such as Triller on account of its black root and ‘milky white’ flower. It is not generally accepted. Fabius appears elsewhere in M’s poems as a con man. We can assume he was more successful in business than our poet although if he too had literary pretensions the couplet may be subtler than it seems.

VIII. The vernal equinox was the prescribed time to visit healing springs. The fragment refers to the cure of the sophist Aelius Aristides, recounted in the second Sacred Oration. In M’s view bad weather was (nearly) enough.

IX. A tentative reading. The doubt in any interpretation is that we do not know whether the wrestler was known as ‘Apollo’ in his lifetime. A fragment in the Tarentum Codex, ‘pleasured by a spook’, possibly belongs here.

X. The apparent formality of the transaction supports a literal rather than a metaphorical reading. Oneirocritics could be found in any marketplace in Anticyra.

XI. The original name in the MS was apparently erased by the same hand which inscribed ‘Mercurialis’ in the margin, as if this is another of M’s mocking self-epitaphs. The bias of M’s fragments suggests that any of his enemies (or friends, by a difficult distinction) might be the subject. To read M as a confessional poet strangely misses the target.